"I started to see more and more emphasis for advanced degrees," says Steve Northlund, 33, a business unit executive at IBM. "Often [at IBM] I come across companies in startup mode that we might be looking to do business with.
THE disorganization led to a poisonous culture in the broadband unit, former executives said, with the only available means for advancement often being to attack the technologies and strategies of other executives.
Compensation for the unit's executives soared.
Pirelli of Italy and Furukawa Electric of Japan are still bidding for the unit, the executives said.
The new products have license fees of $10 to $25 a unit, Microsoft executives said.
In any kind of future combination, it is expected that "60 Minutes" would be separated and would operate as an independent unit, several executives said.
Further details of the restructuring, to be announced as the company is expected to report a 53percentt decline in pretax profit Thursday, include plans to float 25percentt of its mobile phone unit, the executives said.
The deal originated in Enron North America, the company's trading unit, where executives conceived a plan to take advantage of a group of power plants under construction in the Midwest.
As if Xerox didn't already have enough problems, now it's owning up to a scheme at its Mexican unit where executives, among other things, hid bad debt and artificially inflated revenue.
